Neill Blomkamp's 'Alien 5' Probably Isn't Happening

As one of the most innovative minds working in sci-fi today, director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) excited lots of fans when he revealed that he was working on a new Alien movie, tentatively titled Alien 5, back in early 2015. But alas, it now looks like the movie isn't meant to be.

The new film sounded amazing, as it would have ignored the events of the dismal Alien 3 and Alien 4 and instead taken place after Aliens. Sigourney Weaver was set to return as Ripley to see her iconic character get a deserving send-off, and the film also would have focused on an adult version of Newt - the little girl from the 1986 film. In a tweet on January 20, the director responded to a fan who asked, "What are the chances of the Alien project happening?" by simply saying "slim."

That doesn't inspire much confidence that Blomkamp is going to get the movie made, but then again, it's not all that surprising. At the time of the original announcement, Ridley Scott's next movie in the franchise was believed to be a Prometheus sequel. That movie has since becomeAlien: Covenant, and with a tighter connection to the original franchise than what was first intended, it seems that Scott and his own plans for the franchise have taken over from whatever Blomkamp envisioned.

A photo posted by Brownsnout (@neillblomkamp) on Jul 16, 2015 at 12:07pm PDT

Maybe Scott will still decide to bring in Blomkamp for a future Alien movie, but we're not holding our breath. The two directors seem to have different ideas about the direction the franchise should take, and it's unlikely that we'll ever get to see just what Neill Blomkamp's Alien movie could have been.